Training Log Entry 32

January 8 - 14, 2024

Monday January 8

Off

Tuesday January 9

After taking three days off, the pain on the top of my left foot had subsided somewhat, though it hadn’t vanished entirely. Despite this, since the aching pain was relatively mild, I decided to put it to the test and see how it felt while running.

The day before we had some snowfall, but not much ice had formed and the trail was still runnable, albeit covered in packed snow. This actually worked in my favor, as it forced me to slow down and placed less pressure on my foot.

During the run, I could still feel a faint ache in my foot, but it was subtle enough that I could easily ignore it. Apart from my foot, I felt reasonably well. Given I took three days completely off, I was, as expected, a bit stiff overall.

In the end, I managed to clock in 8.3km for the day.

Wednesday January 10

My foot felt similar to the previous day, so I had planned to go for another run. However, a storm rolled through for most of the day, so I decided to take the day off.

Thursday January 11

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a great run this day. Despite only going at a moderate pace, I found myself working harder than usual, as I struggled to settle into a comfortable rhythm and remain relax.

However, things went much better during the 5x100m I did afterwards. These felt much stronger compared to the easy run, which was encouraging. Additionally, I didn’t experience any issues with my foot during either the run or the strides, which suggests that it’s recovering well.

The total distance including the 8km run and the strides came to 8.5km.

Friday January 12

Since my injury concerns had subsided over the past few days, I decided to push myself on this workout day with a 30-minute tempo at steady pace. Given my recent inconsistent training, I knew this would be a challenge workout, but I wanted to see where my current fitness was standing.

At the beginning of the tempo, I felt decent but not entirely comfortable. My pace felt good, but the effort level was higher than I would have liked. To help try and relax, I focused on keeping my stride short and quick, which helped slightly.

Unfortunately, around 3km in, I realized that my effort level was unsustainable, so I took a brief break. Considering my recent training, I wasn’t too discouraged by this setback, and was perfectly fine with splitting up the tempo.

When I resumed the tempo, I could tell that I was still pushing too hard. My condition wasn’t improving as I kept going, so I took another break at around 4.5km. At this point, I checked my watch to see that my average pace was 4:02/km, which was significantly faster than my target of 4:20/km. Seeing this fast pace made me completely reevaluate the workout and I decided to adjust my goal to maintaining the current pace for 7km.

The final stretch was tough, but I managed to hold on and finish the tempo at a respectable pace.

The splits for the 7km tempo were the following:

• 4:02
• 4:05
• 4:07
• 3:56
• 3:52
• 3:52
• 4:02

Even considering the breaks, with an average pace of 4:00/km, I was very surprised with how well my legs were moving. I believe this improvement was largely due to my increased cadence, but it was also likely the cause for my stride being uncomfortable.

The key takeaway from this workout is that my pacing needs some work. This is the aspect I’m most concern about heading into my upcoming races, but with some longer, hillier tempos planned for the coming weeks, I’ll have plenty of opportunities to work on it.

Including the warm-up and cool-down, the total volume for the day amounted to 13.8km.

Saturday January 13

After the previous day’s unexpectedly hard workout, I was feeling the effects during this run. My legs were heavy and the entire run felt considerably more challenging than it should have.

I only managed to get in 4.5km before calling it, but I followed up with 5x100m strides, which felt surprisingly snappy. This brought the total volume 5km.

Sunday January 14

My plan for this week was to do a relaxed, moderate-length long run. It had been three weeks since my last long run, but after Friday’s workout, I was confident that my fitness was returning rapidly.

Despite aiming for a relaxed effort, I struggled to control my pacing and pushed the pace too hard. My legs didn’t feel very fresh from the beginning, with my sore glutes making the uphills particularly difficult. This combined with numerous icy and muddy sections made it difficult to establish a smooth rhythm, and led me to take a few breaks.

In the final third of the run, the road conditions improved significantly, which helped me start to feel better. However, I was already aerobically exhausted by this point, which made the remainder of the run still challenging.

Although the effort was harder than originally planned, I managed to cover 16.3km at a respectable 4:38/km average. This long run brought my total mileage for the 5-day training week to 52km with 350m of elevation gain.